The present invention relates generally to character entering into a computing device, and, more particularly, to on-screen character entering with a remote control unit.
“Smart” consumer electronics that can interact with users, such as cable set-top boxes and media streaming devices, has become increasingly popular. These devices can take user's character input in the form of text. Even though conventional keyboard can be used for entering text, most such “smart” consumer electronics use simple remote control unit to control all aspects of the operation of the “smart” devices including entering text. As conventional hand-held remote control units have a very limited number of buttons, they generally utilize an on-screen displayed (OSD) keypad for entering text.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional OSD text entering system. A media streaming device 102 is connected to a TV set 110 through a cable 107. The media streaming device 102, for instance, can be an Apple TV. The cable 107 can exemplarily be a HDMI cable. The TV set display an OSD keypad 120 on its screen 113 when text entry operation is invoked. The OSD keypad has character keys: “a”, “b”, and “1”, etc. The OSD keypad 120 also has command keys, such as “Cap”, “Low”, “#” and “←”, representing “display capital letters”, “display lower case letters”, “display special characters” and “back space”, respectively. As shown in FIG. 1, as the “Low” is highlighted, lower case letters are displayed in the OSD keypad 120. In this case, letter key “h” is highlighted, i.e., selected.
Referring again to FIG. 1, the conventional OSD text entering system also includes a remote control unit 130 having at least four shift buttons 132-138 and a enter button 141. The remote control unit 130 may use infrared signals or radio frequency signals to transmit the button pressing information to the media streaming device 102. The shift button 132-138 is for character selection on the OSD keypad to shift one character left, up, right and down, respectively, for every press of the buttons. In the case as shown in FIG. 1, when the enter button 141 is pressed, letter “h” is then entered. When shift button 132 is pressed, the selection will be shifted to letter key “g”. If then the button 134 is pressed, the selection will be shifted to letter key “a”. A problem with the conventional OSD text entering system is that often time two or more of the shift buttons 132-138 have to be pressed multiple times sequentially to reach a desired letter—and this can be slow and frustrating.
As such, what is desired is an OSD text entering system that can easily enter characters with a limited number of buttons.
The drawings accompanying and forming part of this specification are included to depict certain aspects of the invention. A clearer conception of the invention, and of the components and operation of systems provided with the invention, will become more readily apparent by referring to the exemplary, and therefore non-limiting, embodiments illustrated in the drawings, wherein like reference numbers (if they occur in more than one view) designate the same elements. The invention may be better understood by reference to one or more of these drawings in combination with the description presented herein.